


The last good kiss you had (was years ago)

by afterism



Category: Political Animals
Genre: Character Study, Growing Up In The White House, M/M, Non-Explicit Underage, Pre-Canon, Twincest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:49:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afterism/pseuds/afterism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>TJ's fifteen and a hundred thousand people have just found out he's gay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The last good kiss you had (was years ago)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hllangel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hllangel/gifts).



> The title and two lines at the start at from Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg by Richard Hugo. Happy Yuletide, Hllangel!

_Isn’t this your life? That ancient kiss  
still burning out your eyes?_

 

He gets the East Room when he's seven, and Dougie moves into the West Room, and he thinks that it's the coolest thing in the world that they're got a whole hallway to themselves between them.

"A few things are going to change, but we will still have family dinners together, even your father," Mom says, and Dougie snorts, the most cynical seven year old he's ever known and TJ shoots him his most delighted grin.

Mom raises an eyebrow, looking between the two of them. "This is your _home_ ," she says, carefully, and _duh_. "So you have to look after it. Promise me?"

They hum vaguely in unison, and Mom gives them that look, like she's trying not to smile not much. 

"Can we go in the pool?" TJ says.

"It's January," Mom points out, and when she's not looking Dougie catches his eye, and pulls a face. "And shouldn't you two be unpacking?"

She leaves them to it, because apparently they're super safe in here, and Dougie follows TJ into his bedroom because that's what they always do.

\---

His first _real_ kiss, the one that's documented, repeatedly brought up by people who are so desperate to talk to him about what an inspiration he is, the one he tells people about through carefully scripted interviews with his mom's press aide standing just behind his shoulder, was on the roof of the White House. He says it was the end of the summer, just before he went to boarding school, and he had gone up there with one of his best friends to say goodbye just as dusk was falling. They stayed up there until the chill set in, and they cuddled up close as the stars came out and when TJ finally turned to say goodbye, well - "We finally kissed," TJ says, smiling down at his hands, and when he glances up the interviewer is sighing softly, and looking like she's ready to write pages about what a _brave_ and inspirational young man he is. His mother's press aide still lingers behind him, so he never mentions the guy was twenty two, or part of his security detail, or that later on he fucked him in the Lincoln bedroom. 

And it definitely wasn't his first kiss.

\---

His junior prom is a media sideshow - swarms of paparazzi outside the school gates and his brother in tuxedo shorts, and the worst thing thing is he's not even surprised about any of it; the reporters yelling his name as he turns up in an armoured car with his brother and his brother's date, because the most popular kid in class decided to go stag; how there are Secret Service men guarding the punch, and he wins Prom Prince and for a moment it's almost like people are cheering for him just like they cheer for his dad, and he's so _bored_. And - it's not like he isn't used to having to sit through dull state dinners and long parties where he's all dressed up and expected to be the always-smiling kid who grew up into the artistic pretty boy, all long fingers and the upturned corners of his mouth, still laughing, but he hasn't yet learnt how to keep that up constantly.

He slips away from his security detail while Doug is drawing attention to himself with his terrible, terrible dancing; he slips to the bathroom and checks no one's looking before he steps up onto the sink and shoves open the window and he's out into the cool air before anyone can notice he's gone. He walks a little way into the grounds, so certain he's alone that he doesn't even try to stick to the shadows, and he stops to lean against the huge and ancient pine tree that dominates the grounds. He lights a cigarette with a spark of his lighter like a flash of gold in shadowed grounds, and as the smoke clears from his first exhale there's a movement near the school.

He freezes, but then the movement turns into a shadow which turns into Josh, his lab partner, getting closer, and TJ barely spoke to him for the whole semester but he knows he blushed all the way down to his chest when TJ pressed his leg against his and Josh didn't pull away. 

"Hey," Josh says, stopping a couple of feet away and sounding a little breathless. TJ just looks at him. "Er, could I borrow a cigarette?"

"No," TJ says, and steps closer before Josh can get the wrong idea and do something dumb like _leave_. "But you can have this one," he says, and holds it to Josh's mouth, and grins tight and wicked when Josh doesn't even hesitate to wrap his lips around the filter. He's obviously never done this before - he doesn't breathe in, just holds it in his mouth, but at least he breathes out before he swallows and ends up choking. TJ lets him take a couple of breaths, fresh air into his lungs, and then grabs him by the knot of his tie and pulls him into a kiss. Josh returns it so eagerly he almost laughs; settles for grinning against his mouth instead and coaxes him into opening it, slow and dirty because he knows just what he likes.

(that's not his first kiss either, but that's not the point)

\---

The first kiss he cares about is in Grandpa Hammond's barn, in the middle of the best summer ever, when it's entirely just them; long afternoons of just him and his brother playing like they're still little kids and not nearly sixteen, and even their security detail only know the very basics - a summer spent on an old farm, acres of field and an old barn with haystacks and warm afternoon light spilling across his brother's eyelashes as they wrestle, laughing, before collapsing side by side and he watches the dust motes as Douglas watches him, as he licks his lips and kisses him.

That was always the greatest joke, the thought he cherished when he needed to smile for the cameras because everyone knew ( _thought_ they knew) his dirty little secret - but his first kiss had been with his brother in a sun-drenched barn and he laughed because not one of these reporters or rednecks or people demanding that he expose his soul so that they could judge him - not one of them could take that from him. 

It's the best summer ever, until his mom gets a call that pictures of TJ kissing a boy at his junior prom have surfaced - they haven't been published, not yet, but they're out there.

\---

Grandma just looks at him for a long moment, studying his face until he drops his gaze to the floor and starts biting his lip, and finally she says, "Oh, sweetie, like I didn't know."

She pulls him close, hugging him with a strength he didn't know she had, and then clutches the top of his arms to pull him away and look him straight in the eye. "Don't you ever lie about something like you, you hear," she says and he nods, swallowing back tears, and as she pats him on the shoulder she adds, "I guess it's about time I taught you how to make a martini, seeing how grown up you are and all."

\---

They get a fixer, bury the hell out of the photos, but now there are rumours that are lot harder to squash and they make a decision (TJ thinks he makes a decision, screaming across the East Room about how it's _his fucking life_ , but really it's Bud) - they control it, act like it was the plan, like this is something TJ is just _dying_ to let the world know, and people fawn over what an inspiration he is. The rest of it - the hate, the vitriol, the protesters who try to tell him he's going to burn in hell - it's so boringly expected he hardly takes notice. He only really registers it in its absence; the moments when it's just him, and Dougie, and no one else to demand a single thing from him.

He's told not to take it personally, and he laughs in his mom's face. This is _politics_ , it's the thing that's always more important than him, of course it's personal. He's almost impressed by how straight she keeps her face - but, of course, dad's always been the one who can make something true just by believing in it. Mom's better at the angles, and she works this one by telling him how they're going to contain this, because all she wants to do is protect him.

Fifteen years old and he becomes the President's queer kid, both a shining beacon of courage and an eternally damned soul, everything's that's wrong with this government, etc etc, and kids older than him write him letters telling him what an inspiration he is and upperclassmen send him scorching glances between his bodyguards, and it feels like a dream where he's drowning - it's not real, it can't possibly be real but he can't _breathe_. 

(and - this is his _life_ , it's something other people use to get money or fame or whatever the fuck it is that other people want, his life that can be measured in tips and leaks and headlines.)

\---

He learns about fraternal twins in fifth grade, when he's in the middle of a huge fight with Dougie. Everyone keeps asking why doesn't he look like his brother: TJ is the boy with the widest smile, surrounded by friends because he got all the best (worst, the kind that bring the most trouble) parts of his dad - the charisma, the ability to make anyone fall in love with him, the good heart masquerading behind amorality. But dad could get the big things right, fix the world and make mom smile even when she's mad at him; if not the little ones, like not making her mad in the first place - TJ doesn't know how to fix _anything_ , he couldn't fix the stupid arm on Dougie's stupid Captain America action figure, and he can't fix the way Dougie won't look at him any more, and sometimes he thinks he just shouldn't try at all, because everything else seems to fall into place without him having to do a single thing. He's the product of being raised under a spotlight, and sometimes it feels like not a single part of him belongs to himself.

Usually that's okay, though - he belongs to Douglas, wholly and utterly, and Douglas belongs to him, but now Dougie is keeping secrets from him and even if he can't remember why they even started fighting any more he knows he's not going to be the one to finish it.

He lasts another day before he says sorry, standing in the doorway of the East Room as Dougie leans against the frame of the West Room, and he's staring down at his toes when suddenly Dougie tackles him into a hug and he's talking about how some twins have this psychic thing, they can feel it when the other one in is pain and stuff, and there was a load of dumb stuff about it only working with paternal twins but they were close enough for it to work, right? And TJ nods because yeah, his chest feels lighter than it has all week and Dougie says me too, and grins at him.

Later on TJ is scowling because Dougie is poking his own arm with a pin and TJ _can't feel it_ , which just isn't _fair_. A couple of decades later and TJ is admitted to hospital, unconscious and smelling like exhaust fumes and under a different name, and Douglas's chest feels so tight, like he can't breathe, for a moment he thinks the psychic twin thing has finally kicked in.

\---

He switches schools straight after he comes out - they need somewhere with higher security, and higher walls, and highly-educated counsellors who make sure he knows they're available to him whenever he needs to _talk_. Doug wants to come with him - begs, even, but TJ just grins and says, "What, can't live without me, little bro? Besides, if you leave, who's left to kick everyone's ass in debate?"

The idea is to keep him safe and warm and clean, although they don't really know about the last part, and none of it works anyway. He still gets letters from people who don't even know him, and everyone keeps trying to talk to him, and the only people he lets into his room are the ones who bring him something he can get lost in. TJ is too much of a mess to keep it under wraps, so he switches again to finish high school somewhere where he will be totally clean this time, he promises, he really does mean it this time because it's the first time he's had to say it. 

College is, well - he gets caught sleeping with a professor one time and of course everybody knows and hey, no big deal, he kind of hated this college anyway, it's not in a proper college town and there are too many people who want to talk about his mom. So he switches again, declares a music major, and then drops out completely while he's too high to even have to think about it. He goes through three boarding schools, two colleges, one White House and not a single one feels like home. 

There are public stints in rehab and quiet sessions with discreet therapists, the kind that have a reputation to keep and a threat of billion-dollar lawsuits if they don't (his dad's joke, of course, but the terrifying thing is that he can make you believe anything he says), he has offers for teaching positions and concerts and talk shows and - he'll be fine, really, because he hasn't earned any of this but he didn't ask for it either, and he's getting used to what being a Hammond really means.

\---

When he's eight years old his favourite thing to do is sneak out of his bedroom and down to the East Room on the floor below, the one that looks like a huge ballroom, to the ancient Steinway piano that sits perfectly quiet until he decides to play, and when he stops playing it's quiet again. There are no teachers to correct his fingers and no one telling him what to play next and no one clapping when he finishes - he loves it, because this thing is entirely his own. 

He's so afraid that someone might take it away from him that when his dad catches him playing, he pretends he doesn't care at all.


End file.
